Mobile office

My residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude has ended for the moment. I am back in New York for the summer, will be in Europe again in the fall.

Here in NY my office is mobile. I am mostly at either the main library at Bryant Park in Manhattan or at one of the Goethe Institute locations. All of which have architecture books and magazines, ample desk space, decent-speed wireless internet, and coffee nearby.

Some specs on my mobile office below:

Everything's in a hard-body VCR case that I found last year in Brooklyn and thoroughly disinfected. A hotdog vendor yesterday asked me if I was carrying a million dollars in cash.

The velcro straps hold down the Lenovo Ideapad laptop, running Intel i5 processor core, which works fine for me, since I'm rarely doing renderings or anything that speed-oriented. Dual partitions running Windows 7. I decided not to upgrade to 8 because I am using this Link Extension Tool to run programs across the partition. (Plus 8 seems to be mostly about touchscreens). On the right side are headphones and power cord.

Beneath the laptop is an optical mouse for drawing. On the left are a gesture recognition device that I'm working with, a standard usb flashdrive, a 3-prong to 2-prong grounding converter, and a watch battery. That indentation above the mouse fits my back-up external drive perfectly, but I realized I was carrying all my digital eggs in one basket. I could probably fit one of my moleskin notebooks there, instead.

Under the square flap are an external drive for running Linux (ubuntu) on my laptop or any computer, an audio cable and a Micron pen for hand drawing or notes.

what do you use gesture recognition right now? so far i love using the 3dconnexion for 3d model navigation as well as the wacom for drawing. would love to add some knew 'kinect' type gesture recognition technology to my toolbox one day.

Gruen - thanks for the comment. Business cards, indeed! That's on my summer to-do list. As far as tape measure, for anything larger than furniture I use a Bosch laser measuring tool that I got for about $20 at Home Depot. It's about the size of 2 iphones stacked on top of each other, measures up to 230 ft, cm or inches. For furniture size or smaller I have a West Elm gizmo that I got free at an art fair. I like it because it has a built in level, so it's convenient for quick decisions about installing or hanging things. It's about the size of a business card case. When I am working on exhibits or presentations I keep that in my jacket pocket.

Metaarchitect - great name. I have been working with a developer version of the LEAP device since the spring. The first phase of my work is a grasshopper component library that will be released first to the developer community eary this summer, tested, and hopefully available to the public and on the Rhino/Grasshopper websites by August. I will post updates here on my blog. IF you like 3D navigation with hand motion and drawing with wacom, you will hopefully find this to be a combination of both - drawing in the air, not limited to a planar registration.

mitch- thanks so much for being around. whether its a leap motion device or softkinect (or whatever hits the market with normal compatibility for osx or PC first) ill want to be one of the first to try it. also, looks like you have fun doing what you do. keep it up. peace.

About this Blog

This blog started with research, theory topics, travel and architecture discoveries during my fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. It continues, somewhat sporadically, with my relocation to Detroit as an Assistant Professor at University of Michigan. The blog spans architecture, urban design, planning, and tangents from these.